New York City is an experiment in European-style socialism which always
bears watching ... even if doings there are frequently amazing, and
rarely anything those west of the Hudson would wish to emulate.

The Washington Post, for instance, published last month another
update on the state of New York City's "infrastructure" --
the tax-funded bridges, highways and public buildings which are collapsing
around them, even as New Yorkers brag about their current "cultural
renaissance." Entire expressways are about to be junked as beyond
repair, the Post reported, while hundreds of homes are now routinely
flooded by failing sewer systems, and "In Borough Park, bricks
falling off a decrepit public school [recently] killed a teen-age girl."

Do New Yorkers plan to entertain bids from private firms to finally
take over and operate for profit some of the structures and services
which have been driven into such embarrassing bankruptcy by a century
of government mal-administration? Of course not. They're merely looking
to increase taxes and fees adequate to summon up, oh, another $91 billion
dollars, the Post reveals.

Meantime, New York's "culture" in recent years has given
the world such euphemisms as "wilding." the innocent might
presume this to be a word coined by young men in James Fenimore Cooper's
home state to refer to the habit of taking a brisk hike into the Catskill
wilderness to enjoy nature's splendor. Instead, it turned out the term
was used among a group of healthy young New York men to refer to their
activity of ambushing a young professional woman while she jogged in
one of the city's parks in broad daylight a few years back, beating
her nearly to death, and then taking turns in the repeated rape of their
bleeding, comatose victim. The young men did not seem particularly ashamed
when tracked down; it had all seemed good clean fun to them.

Did New Yorkers respond by rising up en masse to eliminate all the
unconstitutional firearms laws which have been foisted upon them over
the previous 75 years, laws which effectively ban such victims from
carrying concealed handguns for their own defense? Why, no. Quite to
the contrary, this is the city where Bernard Goetz -- though acquitted
on grounds of self-defense for the actual shooting of the muggers who
used a sharpened screwdriver in place of a beggar's bowl in an attempt
to solicit his cash on a city subway -- was nonetheless punished by
authorities for "carrying a concealed weapon without a permit,"
on the fantastical premise that the average law-abiding New Yorker could
actually receive such a permit, simply by applying.

("New York City gun laws are so strict that applicants must show
a 'need or special danger'," reports Alan Gottlieb of the Second
Amendment Foundation in his 1996 book "Politically Correct Guns."
When the Wall Street Journal won a court suit in 1981 requiring
New York Police to release the names of the chosen few who had
been granted pistol permits, the city revealed more than 9 000 non-police
city employees had been granted this privilege which is withheld from
the average New Yorker. It was subsequently revealed permits had also
been issued to such "celebrities" as Laurance Rockefeller,
Uri Geller, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, Howard Stern, Joan Rivers, and
anti-gun New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs "Punch"
Sulzberger.)

But now we reach an astounding new depth of slackjawed dementia, as
word arrives that a New York federal trial jury last month awarded $500
000 in damages to a 19-year-old man who survived a gunshot wound, ordering
that those damages be paid not by the "friend" who "accidentally"
shot 19-year-old Steven Fox in the head after purchasing his firearm
illegally (need we even ask whether New York City public schools
take advantage of the free firearm safety classes offered by the NRA?),
but rather against a group of 15 American handgun manufacturers, including
Colt and Beretta USA, on the fantastic legal theory that those manufacturers
knowingly sell "too many" handguns in Southern states, aware
that some of those firearms are later re-sold in areas where local authorities
have enacted unenforceable gun laws which drive up the black market
price of such goods.

Leave aside the obvious fact that only one of the 15 defendants could
possibly have manufactured the firearm in question. The legal repercussions
should such a verdict withstand appeal -- the likelihood of lawsuits
against auto manufacturers for selling cars of which they "know
full well" some will be driven by drunks, the liability of liquor
distributors who sell six-packs some of which they "know full well"
are later re-sold out of car trunks to fraternity boys in dry counties
-- are mind-boggling.

Surely we now approach the last stop on a dizzying downhill trolley-ride
to that particular circle of hell where everyone will be responsible
for evil acts except the criminals who actually perpetrate them.

In fact, the real agenda here was revealed by plaintiff attorney Elisa
Barnes, who in her closing argument declared "This huge pool [of
handguns] is like toxic waste."

The notion that it is only "handguns" to which these folks
object is a bitter joke. Would New York authorities agree to hand a
semi-auto military-style rifle of at least 26 inches in length to each
youth turning in an "illegal" handgun, in a one-for-one exchange?
Of course not. In fact, defying promises to never use the data for such
a purpose, New York authorities have already started used gun registration
records to begin seizing "previously legal" semi-automatic
rifles far too large to ever be considered "concealable weapons."

What these twisted souls hate is the notion that individuals American
victims of crime or oppression should retain any power to defend
themselves, rather than mewling piteously into the telephone and then
patiently waiting for our government masters to dispense aid at their
leisure.

In vain do patriots attempt to remind such hand-picked federal juries
that Thomas Paine spoke for all Americans when he wrote in 1775: "Arms
like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe,
and preserve order in the world as well as property"; that Patrick
Henry said during the Virginia debates on ratification of the Constitution,
"The great object is, that every man be armed. ... Everyone who
is able may have a gun"; that Washington's friend George Mason
agreed with Mr. Henry, reminding the Virginia convention that the British
authorities had found "to disarm the people ... was the best and
most effectual way to enslave them"; that Samuel Adams vowed Massachusetts
would never ratify the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights were added
to make clear "that the said Constitution be never construed to
authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the
rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States,
who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their arms."

Make no mistake, a battle has been joined. As the Armenian minority
learned in Turkey in 1915 -- as the Ukrainian minority learned to their
dismay in Stalin's Russia in the 1930s, and the Jewish and Gypsy minorities
in Germany shortly thereafter -- once a people stand disarmed, their
other rights hang by a precarious thread.

It was not merely 15 firearms manufacturers that suffered a body blow
in that Brooklyn courtroom last week. It was what remains of our American
liberties.

At the very least, if New Yorkers consider their products "toxic
waste," those 15 manufacturers should promptly refuse to sell any
further firearms or replacement parts to New York City residents ...
starting with the city police.